IAN LADYMAN:
United’s football reeks of poverty. They are so boring it’s almost
ONE of the enduring myths about Sir Alex Ferguson’s great years at Manchester United is that they were consistently thrilling. They were not. There has never been a football team able to turn on the adrenaline every single match day.
Equally, those who have followed United for anything more than a couple of months will recognise they have rarely witnessed anything quite like this.
Under Jose Mourinho, United have become the one thing that will kill just about every sports team in the end. They have become boring to the point of being almost unwatchable.
The traffic around Old Trafford was murder last night. Mourinho and the United team almost didn’t make it to the ground. Cue the joke about it being better had they not bothered.
But that wasn’t the only reason empty red seats started to appear like an outbreak of chicken pox 10 minutes before the end.
No, that was because the United faithful were so bored and drained of optimism that making a dash to beat the traffic was merely the clever thing to do.
There was a time when watching United was worth the 50 minutes sitting stationary on Chester Road afterwards. Under Mourinho, United have become one of those teams who are hardly worth leaving the house for in the first place.
United’s commercial staff had worked hard to sell this game, contacting supporters the day before to urge them to come. As is normal, the club’s fanbase didn’t let them down.
They are a loyal, hardy bunch in the red half of Manchester. They take an almost dogged pride in not turning on their team and here the boos that greeted the end of another night of torpor were nowhere near as intense as they may well have been.
In Birmingham last night, an Aston Villa fan threw a cabbage at manager Steve Bruce. Here, Mourinho walked down the tunnel with some supporters applauding as he went.
Not for much longer, though, surely.
The football has been bad for an awfully long time and now that results are finally following suit, it seems impossible that Mourinho will be tolerated beyond the short term.
It is worth noting that the team which began this game against the 14th best side in Spain cost £370million to assemble. Conveniently, that is just about exactly the value of the 11 players who started Manchester City’s Champions League match in Germany three hours earlier.
This is worth remembering the next time Mourinho starts to grumble about his club’s willingness or otherwise to invest in the players he wants.
This week United released a special edition whisky to commemorate their 1968 European Cup success.
Only four bottles will be produced, one for each of the goals scored in that buccaneering 4-1 defeat of Benfica at Wembley.
It is pertinent because the release is meant as an endorsement of style, panache and glory. As such, it has been produced at a strange and pivotal time in the club’s modern history.
If United stick with Mourinho into and beyond another transfer window, they will surely travel further down the road from what they have traditionally represented and deeper into the realms of mundane functionality. Can that really be allowed to happen? The 1968 team embodied flair and currently the question of style and expression is moot.
How important is it to play with style at Manchester United? Well, the rule of thumb is that it is important at least to try and this is one area where Mourinho fails.
United and their supporters would stomach the nonsense that so often swirls around their Portuguese coach if they won some games and played some decent football.
Given the money invested in this squad — there was another £190m of talent on the bench here — it should not really be too much to ask.
But it is United’s poor football and now their poor results that have allowed a former player such as Paul Scholes to label Mourinho’s behaviour ‘embarrassing’ on TV last night.
Mourinho has always lit fires with what he says and does, but only when the football starts to slide into the gutter does his behaviour become more than of passing importance.
Here, United’s performance epitomised the mood. Mourinho’s players tried but were devoid of imagination and cohesion.
Over 90 minutes, they hardly fashioned an opportunity and under Mourinho that became a habit a while ago.
It has not always been as stupefying as this but it has been dull for a long time and this issue sits right at the heart of what is wrong at United.
How can a club that continues to shine so brightly off the field reek so desperately of poverty on it?